During that hour the fury of combat raged among the brick heaps of Biaches and upon the hill of La Maisonette, and when morning came the French had recovered both positions.
He could hear them cheering, and was hoping that all was over, when the crackle of rifle fire commenced from the western edge of the wood, and he knew that he could delay no longer. His smile gave place to the blustering frown that No. 6 Company knew so well, and, striding forward, he became aware from the hoarse roar of voices that something serious was taking place.
The growing daylight had revealed to the French that the enemy was holding the wood in some strength; and Dennis, who had spied a long line of blue-painted helmets in the distance, was stealthily working his way forward from tree to tree, intent on making a bolt towards them, when that same roar fell upon his ear.
Looking round, he saw a double company of the battalion that had entrained with them forming up for an advance with the bayonet. In sixty seconds they would go charging across the open strip of ground which he had decided upon as his own line of escape, and their right flank would pass within a dozen yards of a white-walled cottage that had been unroofed by a French shell.
He looked at the solid, desperate mass, and then at the thin, struggling French line feeling its way cautiously forward; and a daring resolve came to him as the drums began to roll and he heard the command "Vorwärts!"
Safe from observation in the ruined hovel, he unslung the festoon of racket bombs, and with all the power of his strong young arm hurled them one after another over the top of the wall among the advancing Germans.
Through the aperture where the window had been he marked the effect of the explosions.
Officers brandished their swords, but the unexpectedness of the bomb attack produced panic in the broken ranks, which lost their formation and retired precipitately into the cover of the trees.
But something closer at hand gave Dennis furiously to think!
Led by an officer, half a dozen men ran pluckily forward towards the hovel, but Dennis did not wait for their arrival. Already he was bolting for his life for the shelter of a big shell crater, where he meant to strip off his hated disguise and let the uniform of a British officer act as a passport to the rapidly advancing French.